How much is a ghost kitchen worth?

Short answer: less than the pitch deck said. There is no established realized multiple for ghost kitchens as their own category, so this page uses category data and says so — and buyers, burned by the first wave of closures, pay mainly for direct-ordering revenue and a lease or commissary deal that survives scrutiny. Run your figures in the valuation calculator and see the ghost kitchens page.

The number

Honesty first: BizBuySell's trailing-five-year tables (through Q2 2026) carry no separate ghost kitchen row — the nearest realized rows are Restaurants at 2.18× SDE and Food Trucks at 2.03× SDE, and both are category references, not ghost kitchen multiples. The neutral frame is the size ladder — IBBA Market Pulse, Q2 2026: 2.0× SDE under a $500K price; 2.8× at $500K–$1M; 3.1× at $1M–$2M; 4.8× EBITDA at $2–5M; 5.8× EBITDA at $5–50M — and most single ghost kitchens price in the bottom band, if they trade at all.

The public ceiling is again Damodaran Online's Restaurant/Dining bucket (a proxy here, January 2026) at 17.49× EV/EBITDA — a number no serious buyer will apply to a delivery-only operation renting kitchen pods by the month.

Worked example — shown math, assumptions labeled:

• Revenue (assumption, one busy delivery brand): $500,000
• SDE margin (assumption, after marketplace commissions): 12% → SDE = $500,000 × 0.12 = $60,000
• Multiple (IBBA ladder, under-$500K price band, category framing): 2.0×
• $60,000 × 2.0 = $120,000

Many ghost kitchens are worth less than that as businesses — sometimes the equipment and a transferable brand are the entire deal.

How buyers actually value a ghost kitchen

A ghost kitchen has no dining room, no walk-ins and no sign — so buyers ask what, exactly, they are buying. First, the channel mix. Orders that come through delivery marketplaces at 15–30% commission, on accounts the platform controls, are rented revenue; buyers discount them hard. Orders through your own direct channel — your site, your customer list, your repeat buyers — are owned revenue and carry the valuation. Second, the kitchen arrangement: a pod in a commissary on a short license, a turnkey facility contract with escalators, or your own leased and permitted kitchen — each has different transfer terms, and many commissary agreements require the operator's consent or a fresh application.

Third, the brands. Multiple virtual brands from one kitchen only add value if each has real ratings, order history and a menu engineered to travel; a stack of near-identical brands splitting the same orders is one business wearing costumes. Buyers also audit the algorithm dependence honestly: search placement bought with promotions, ratings that would reset under a new marketplace account, and food that photographs well but arrives badly are all priced in.

What raises the price — and what kills it

Raises it: a direct-ordering channel with a real share of sales and an owned customer list; ratings and order history that live in accounts included in the sale; a kitchen agreement with years left, transferable, at a sane share of revenue; a tight menu engineered for delivery times and food cost; catering or workplace-lunch contracts that order off-platform.

Kills it: 100% marketplace revenue at full commission — the platform can raise fees, change the algorithm or delist you, and the buyer knows it; a commissary deal that cannot be assigned, making the business homeless at closing; promotional spending treated as a growth story instead of a cost; brands whose reviews mention the wrong restaurant's food, because they share a kitchen and a confused line.

Move your number

For this trade the biggest lever is not cost — it is ownership of the customer. Payments and direct ordering: every order moved from a 30% marketplace commission to your own checkout keeps the difference minus processing; building that checkout on clean rails with the Finix payments team turns rented revenue into owned margin. Recurring revenue: workplace lunch programs, subscriptions and re-order prompts to your own list — run by AI and workflow tools instead of hope — are the ClaroPro team's contribution, and they are the difference between category data and a real multiple. Systems: one dashboard for orders, food cost and ratings across brands and platforms is the evidence a buyer prices; a Nova engineering team can build that view.

Run your channel mix through the math honestly: the calculator for ghost kitchens.

This is an educational framework with shown math, not an appraisal; a real price is set by a real buyer on a specific day, and in this trade many honest answers are 'equipment plus a brand, take it or leave it.' That bluntness protects you as the owner — it keeps you from overpaying for marketplace revenue you do not control, and from underselling the direct channel and customer list you actually built. Never invent. Show the math. We're on the side of the business owner.